I dig my knuckles into my eyes in an effort to get rid of the vision of Dean’s pale face as the ground of Island Park slowly drew him under, eating him up like it did his other eleven victims. Not once did his eyes waver from my face, not even when the earth finally closed over him.
Tears well up, hot against my frozen hands. “I hope all the demons in hell are torturing you right now,” I hiccup, more angry at myself for missing him than at anything else. “I hope they’re tearing your eyes out and pulling your teeth out, and ripping your hair out, and cutting you to shreds, and…” I let my voice trail off—I’ve really got to work on better curses.
“Has anyone ever told you how overly dramatic you are?” Nibs asks, and I sniff back my tears in mild embarrassment. “If you ask me, there’s no hell worse than being stuck here with—”
“Shh,” I cut him off again. “Someone’s coming!”
“Yes, yes,” Nibs says complacently, “we’ve already established the fact that our little friend is—”
He breaks off as the muted thumping of boots on stone grows louder, drawing near, then stops. I hear a key being inserted into the lock and the door to our cell is wrenched open.
I close my eyes at the sudden, blinding light.
“Urgh, it reeks in here!” a man says.
I shy away from the deep voice, trying to cover my bare legs with my muddy skirt. My teary gaze falls on Nibs’s prostrated form and I hold back a gasp. Half his face looks like it’s been burnt with acid, a mesh pattern tracing his temple and the top of his left cheek. I swallow with difficulty as I match the pattern burned into his face to that of the iron threads in my coat.
“Morgan?”
I blink up through the curtain of greasy hair that’s fallen over my face as Arthur steps inside.
“Dear God, Morgan, what’s happened to you?”
“You locked me up,” I say through gritted teeth. “I thought that was rather obvious.”
“It wasn’t…” He pauses. “But it’s just been a few hours!”
“You mean days,” I say, alarmed. I can’t possibly have lost track of time that much, can I? Or is that a side effect from being locked up in total obscurity?
“I mean hours,” Arthur repeats, more gently, “and you already look like a mess.”
“Yeah, and your sweetie’s gone batshit crazy to boot,” Nibs says, voicing my fear. “But isn’t that why you put her in here for?”
Arthur glances at the clurichaun with obvious disgust. “Why have they been put together?” he asks, his voice cold. “I want Morgan moved to another cell, one with light and away from—”
“Can’t, sir,” the guard says, his eyes narrowed with revulsion. “Orders.”
“Don’t bother,” I tell Arthur before he can argue back. I lick my dry lips. “Nothing you do or say is going to change the fact that you betrayed me.”
Arthur flinches. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he says so low I barely hear him over Nibs’s loud, rattling breathing. “I will get you out of here, you need to believe me. This is all…temporary.”
Eyes pleading, Arthur leans down and slowly brushes my hair out from my face, his fingers lingering on my cheek. I can’t resist the temptation and bite him, my teeth sinking into his flesh. He cries out but I hold on until the guard kicks me in the gut.
“You’ll pay for that, demon!” the man says, his next kick landing on my sternum and knocking the air out of my lungs.
“Enough!” Arthur says, his voice striving for composure. “I won’t have the prisoner injured before her trial.”
“I hope your hand gets infected and you lose it,” I cough. Then the other shoe drops. “Trial? What trial?”
“The one that will determine whether you should be put down or not,” the guard says, looking like he’s straining not to hit me again.
“Put me down?” I repeat, my insides knotting with fear.
My eyes flicker to the door left wide open behind them. This is my chance. I smile at the guard, goading him to attack me again. In this confined space, he can’t use his sword, and I’ve learned enough from Master Ywain to bring the larger man down long enough to flee.
Arthur must have sensed my desire, for he moves into my field of vision before the guard can come at me.
“I just came to let you know that you are to be tried in a week and a day,” he says. “The trial will be held before members of both KORT and the Board, at Terce[38].” He leans forward, enough so the guard can’t hear him, but far enough from my deadly dentition. “And drop the crazy act. I need you to make a good impression on everyone if I want to get you out of here.”
I squint up at him, too surprised to come up with a snarky repartee. He can’t be serious. It was my understanding that Irene—his own mother—wanted nothing better than to see me eviscerated. So what’s he doing here telling me he wants to set me free?
Arthur straightens up, gives me a pointed look then heads back out.
The guard snorts in disbelief. “Don’t know why he bothered,” he mutters. “You aren’t better than a feral dog.”
And before I can get over my surprise, he kicks me again. I double over in pain, gasping, a wave of warmth spreading down my legs. The heavy iron door squeals back shut, cutting off all light and any hope I had of escaping.
The tears I’ve barely been holding come pouring out in raking sobs.
“There she goes again,” Nibs says, sounding defeated. “Why are you overreacting again? At least you’ve got a chance to make it out alive.”
I cry even harder. “I-It’s not th-that,” I say, burning with humiliation. “I just p-peed myself.”
Chapter 2
Days and nights bleed into each other with the sporadic meal to mark the time ebbing by. And, unfortunately, I’m still sane, which makes my ordeal that much harder to bear.
“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,” I hum off-key, “nobody knows but Jeeesus. Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, Gloooory Halleluuuiah.”
“Can you please stop the racket?” Nibs asks plaintively.
“Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down,” I sing louder, “oh, yes Loooord. Sometimes I’m splattered to the ground, oh yes Loooooord.”
“You’ve sung it ten thousand times already!” Nibs yells over me.
I snap my mouth shut and lean back against the iron door, my post since Arthur’s visit, and the perfect spot to tell if someone’s coming. Not that it matters. By now I’m convinced the whole world’s conveniently forgotten all about me.
“I’m bored,” I say after a while. “Let’s play a game!”
“How about seeing how long it takes Carman to get her ass here and bail us out?”
“That could take ages,” I say. “I’ll be tried and hung before that happens.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Nibs says.
“Why not?” I ask, perking up.
“Because of your Fey blood. Have you noticed a propensity to heal, by any chance?”
I frown to myself, remembering my wounds closing up after drinking from the Sangraal. “I suppose…” I say tentatively.
“So you’re likely to suffer a much more gruesome, painful death instead,” Nibs says with relish. “One that won’t give you a chance to heal back up.”
“That was because of the Sangraal,” I say. “They can’t blame me for that, can they?”
“The Sangraal helps augment one’s powers not temporarily give you one,” Nibs says.
I think back to that dreadful night facing Carman, and how I was able to heal Arthur afterward. “Could it boost your healing too then?” I ask. “Could it restore your ogham?”
Nibs chuckles dryly. “No, but I’d settle for a face lift at this point. Not that it matters in our present circumstances.”
“If I get my hands back on it,” I tell him, “I’ll help restore you to health.”
Before Nibs can answer me with another one of his jabs, the metal of the door vibrates against my back. Someone’s coming down
the stairs. I straighten up as the tremors intensify—more than one person is coming, which means this isn’t mealtime….
Someone unlocks the door and pushes it open, projecting a dazzling wedge of light inside the cell. Before I can scurry away to the other end, however, a guard grabs me by the arm and hauls me to my feet.
“Time to get yourself burned at the stake, demon,” the man says before dragging me out into the narrow hallway and closing the door again.
Despite the guard’s painful hold on my arm, the faint heat of the flickering torch releases some of the tension that’s been accumulating between my shoulder blades while in jail. As my vision adjusts to the light, I find myself standing before a familiar figure dressed all in black. The woman’s heavily-lined eyes are watching me with a flat expression, judging as they always have.
“Hello, Irene,” I say, smiling until my lips crack. “Always a pleasure.”
Her nose wrinkles in distaste.
“Laguz,” she intones, flicking her hand towards me.
The guard barely has the time to let go of my arm before a massive jet of water hits me in the chest, cold and unforgiving. When I think I’m about to drown, the deluge stops, leaving me soaking wet and shaking.
“That’ll have to do,” Irene says with a slight smirk.
The guard proceeds to handcuff me before slipping on a heavy iron collar around my neck, a long, heavy chain hanging from it.
“A fitting leash for the little bitch,” he whispers, before dragging me after him.
◆◆◆
We emerge next to the church, the sky-lake bright with the light of noonday. The wind picks up, plastering my sodden clothes to my body, and bringing with it the ever-present scent of apple blossoms that can’t quite mask the acrid smell of fires. A chill runs down my arms as I remember the pile of dead Fomori serving as a pyre on my way back from facing Carman. Surely they can’t still be burning the dead?
“Get going, you demon spawn,” the guard says, yanking hard on my chain.
I stumble after him as Irene leads us past the church towards the training grounds. I hear the sounds of commotion long before we reach the arena, and I guess I’m to have a public trial, one the whole school seems most eager to attend.
The crowd’s excited chatter grows to a roar of disapproval the moment I step inside the stadium. Something hits me in the face, splattering all over my hair and my guard’s uniform. I barely taste the juice of a well-ripe tomato before another flurry of vegetables and rotten fruit hits me.
“Death to the traitor!” someone shouts as a solid apple hits the back of my head with a loud thunk before bouncing off to the ground and rolling away in the dirt.
My guard cusses under his breath and forces me to go faster towards a round stand erected a third of the way down the arena floor.
“Rip her ogham out!” another shrill voice screams from the stands.
Applause of approval resounds at the cry when a crackling thunder rends the air. I look up, startled.
“I will have order and discipline at my court!” a voice booms out, coming from the dais raised in the center of the stadium.
The curses and cries die out as quickly as a snuffed flame. The man who spoke is a grizzled geezer, his shoulders pulled back proudly, his face stern. Fluttering angrily on a pole above him is a triangular flag depicting a bearded man with the horns of a ram, a sword in one hand and a wreath of oak leaves in the other—the Board’s sigil.
The guard makes me climb onto the wooden stand then proceeds to attach my chain to it.
“Lovely,” I say bitterly, “as if this wasn’t degrading enough.”
The guard smiles wickedly from his position, then gives a final tug on my bindings before stepping away.
Despite the weight of my fetters, I hold myself straighter. If those people think they’ve got me cowering and ready to do their bidding, they’re out of their bloody minds. I stare, unblinking, at the judge and the rest of the jury set in a semi-circle about him.
To the judge’s right are six members of the Board. I see with some relief that Lady Ysolt and her husband are still alive, though Sir Boris’s scarred face and new eye patch tell me he’s barely made it through the battle alive. Next to him is a brooding Father Tristan, followed by a large woman the size of an adult hippo then, dwarfed between her and my once-upon-a-time stepfather Luther, sits Irene.
My gaze instinctively flickers away from her cold face to wander to the other half of the semi-circle, and my heart skips a beat.
“Percy!” I exclaim, more loudly than I expected.
The knight’s head snaps around in my direction and I break into a wide grin. The last time I saw him, he was on the brink of death after fighting off Dean’s evil banshee. I make a mental note to myself to thank Blanchefleur for saving him; if I ever get a chance to get out of these irons that is.
Percy throws me a quick smile before looking away again, as if embarrassed to be overtly friendly with the accused.
The slight hurts, but I can’t blame him. Rather, I blame everyone else around here. Who was the one who warned against the Fey behind all those black-veined murders? Me. Who warned against Carman getting out of jail? Me! But instead of thanking me, they’re now blaming me for everything!
“Morgan Pendragon?” the old man asks.
“What?” I yell, fired up with indignation.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Arthur grow tense and remember his warning to be a good girl if I don’t want to ruin my chances of getting free. I take a deep, calming breath.
“Yes?” I ask more demurely.
“You have been accused of practicing illegal elemental manipulation,” the judge says, loud and clear for all to hear, “of hiding important and dangerous Fey artifacts, and of theft. Do you deny any of these charges?”
I refrain from rolling my eyes at him. “Yes, your highness,” I say. “I deny them all.”
I hear muffled laughs behind me and the judge’s wide face turns slightly pink.
“You’ll address me as ‘Your Honor,’ if you please, Miss Pendragon,” the old man says.
“Yes, sir. Your Honor.”
The judge nods then starts reading from a fat ledger.
“Let us begin then with the illegal practice of EM,” he says, looking over his glasses at me. “A little over a week ago, you found yourself on Island Park, did you not?”
I blink. Was it only a week ago that I was on that cursed island? “Yes, Your Honor,” I say.
“And how did you get to that island?”
“Your honor,” Arthur says, standing up. “There have been many reports, my own included, stating that she’d been kidnapped by the Pendragons’ lawyer.”
“After having escaped from our house,” Irene retorts, her back so straight it looks like a plank of wood’s been shoved down her bustier. “Which is highly suspect in and of itself.”
“Where the only guard present was her kidnapper, which is also highly suspect,” Arthur says, and I have the pleasure of seeing both Irene and Luther squirm.
“Noted,” the judge says. “Miss Pendragon, once on Island Park you were, however, seen performing EM illegally. And not for the first time, I believe.”
I blanch. To my surprise, Lance stands up, his perfect features blank of any expression.
“Your Honor,” he says, “Sir Arthur and myself had been fighting Carman and were losing the battle. We would have been killed if Miss Pendragon hadn’t come to our defense. She also healed Sir Arthur who’d sustained severe injuries, and cured the Lady Jennifer from the Fey poison that claimed so many before. If it weren’t for her, none of us would be present here today.”
I repress a grimace, wishing I could forget that last part—saving Jennifer is not one of my proudest achievements.
“Yet she was there when Carman was freed,” the judge says. “Indeed, she was brought there, which can only mean that she was somehow crucial to Carman’s liberation. So tell me, child, how did you perform those feats
? Did you perchance obtain some of the school’s more powerful oghams?”
“Your Honor,” Arthur interrupts again, “no ogham was found on Morgan’s person at the time of her arrest, and there are plenty of witnesses that observed her performing these healings without their use.”
“She could have hidden them,” the blond-haired KORT knight sitting next to Percy says lazily. “I don’t believe she was searched until Lady Irene finally apprehended her.”
The judge eyes me carefully and I gulp. “I’m not quite sure about all the supposed EM, Your Honor,” I say, though Nibs’s explanations come back to mind. “I assumed it was because of the Sangraal.”
There’s a collective intake of breath in the stands behind me at the name of the magical cup, but the judge’s face brightens. This is what he’s been waiting for all along.
“How did the Sangraal come to be in your hands?” he asks.
“I first found the cup here at school,” I say, “but then I lost it and didn’t see it again until it was brought to me up on the island. I think”—I bite on my lower lip—“I think I would have died without it.”
The judge frowns. “Who brought it to you then, child?”
I look down at my hands stained with black, the indelible remains of that one, horrifying time I tried to save Owen from the Siege Perilous. I rub them together self-consciously.
“Who brought it to you, Miss Pendragon?” the judge asks again.
“Puck, Your Honor,” I reply with a sigh.
The jury pulls back in surprise.
As if he’d been waiting to hear his name, I spot the little hobgoblin making his way into the training arena, hopping and skipping down the sandy floor towards the jury’s dais as fast as his little legs will carry him.
Suddenly, his face whips upward and he skids to a stop to sniff the air. His horny head snaps over in my direction and I see his tiny, fluffy tail beat wildly as he launches off in my direction. But before he can reach me, he trips on his own two hooves and falls rolling to the ground, coming to a resounding stop at the foot of my stand. I instinctively try to kneel to help him up but the restraints tighten around me, keeping me locked in my upright position.
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